I am looking for universities with no application fee. I would greatly appreciate if someone can give me a few names....off the top of your head maybe..I come from poor country...I have already spent money on PGRE, GRE general and IELTS...I only have money left for travel to USA if selected so I don't want to waste that money on application fees.....I am also considering biophysics, engineering and applied physics departments apart from physics.....I get to put uni codes on my GRE exam day on 4th of november so it would be great if you can respond before that....

Also, I'm under the impression that many universities will waive the fee in certain circumstances; I don't know what the requirements are for this, but it might be posted on their websites or you could always email them. Anyways, best of luck finding schools that will waive the fee or which don't have one in the first place!!!

It always perplexed me how there are students who are willing to let application fees and GRE score report costs decide where they apply, and are willing to, for instance if they got a 400 PGRE, not take the GRE a second time because they "can't afford it" etc... If I were in such a bleak financial situation, I would probably major in something other than physics... something that pays better, and pays sooner than 6 years down the road.

quizivex wrote:It always perplexed me how there are students who are willing to let application fees and GRE score report costs decide where they apply, and are willing to, for instance if they got a 400 PGRE, not take the GRE a second time because they "can't afford it" etc... If I were in such a bleak financial situation, I would probably major in something other than physics... something that pays better, and pays sooner than 6 years down the road.

Wow physicist do have limited grasp on reality. In some countries average people make in a year what average people in the US make in a week. I always figured people knew that.

Wow student do have limited grasp on English. The derogatory tone of your post was not appropriate. I was just expressing my curiosity in a harmless way.

When ether says he comes from a poor country and he can't afford application fees, it sounds like he is POOR, that he and his family are deprived, to some extent. Perhaps that is not the case... I wish him the best of luck with his plans.

Shouravv's comments were very helpful in drawing the distinction... that if someone is unable to afford things in the US, it does not mean he is uncomfortably poor in his home country. There are still tons of deprived, poor people in the 3rd world, and to suggest that we domestic students are ignorant for not knowing the financial situations of every student is obnoxious on your part.

We are under no obligation to know the exchange rates of all your countries. You are the ones visiting another country, not us. If someone is so poor that he lives in a hut without running water and can't afford food, then physics grad school in the US might not be the best career to choose. Nobody will consider someone a hero for throwing away an opportunity to improve his standard of living for some "selfless pursuit of physical knowledge".

Finally, while none of us are satisfied with how underpaid and underappreciated physicists are, we should not promote the idea that there are two types of careers, 1) physics and 2) greed. There are other science-based careers (such as medicine, chemical engineering) that pay better and still do something useful for society.

I, for one, am not someone who is overflowing with fascination for physics, nor do I have parents in academia guiding me to follow their footsteps. I chose physics for a chance to do something interesting and hopefully useful for society, but I had plenty of other interests, and if I were uncomfortably poor, I wouldn't have hesitated to pick a more lucrative career, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

Hi everyone,Thanks for all the input. I didn't mean to cause a scene here...I just wanted a few names....I am just saving some money for my travel expenses and I just realised that I will also have to pay almost 250 dollars for student visa, so I can't take any chances with my savings....I am also not giving much thought on the rankings and stuff because I can't afford to apply at 20 universities so I am going for the mediocre universities where I have a decent chance......by the way I am no way poor in my country but I think I could only survive for one month in america with my yearly income (two years ago I had a job, now I don't even have that and on top of that I have to look after my disabled brother and my elderly mother, we have no social security and I am hoping to save 100-150 dollars outta my stipend to send home)....that's all...

I am planning to study physics in grad school for two reasons, firstly I always liked physics, secondly I am financially independent and can pursue my fancies.And I am hoping this pursuit will pay my bills in future.

So for me it is a selfish pursuit, to satisfy my intellect...

And I echo what quizivex said, if I were financially unstable I would definitely try to do something that is financially more lucrative rather than do physics..

Point I am trying to say is, not just making money, but even if you are trying to solve the mystery of whole damn universe, in the end it is a selfish pursuit only...

anyways all the best to you ether..

PS: not trying to do an online argument { i have seen other threads in this site..} but just something I feel about learning physics..

Wow student do have limited grasp on English. The derogatory tone of your post was not appropriate. I was just expressing my curiosity in a harmless way.

I chose physics for a chance to do something interesting and hopefully useful for society, but I had plenty of other interests, and if I were uncomfortably poor, I wouldn't have hesitated to pick a more lucrative career, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

Thank you for the grammar analysis of a mistyped word. You have have added to the long legacyof forum grammar school lessons.

I dont believe that everyone who is uncomfortably poor should feel compelled to get an MBA or MD. A physics PhD will still give anyone who is uncomfortably poor a boost in their finances. Physics is not selfless career despite how tough grad school may feel, you still have a PhD in a technical field and that should give a decent amount of options. Compare getting a job with PhD in philosophy and PhD in Physics. I know physics grads like to view themselves as some as some science martyr (I do too sometimes) but if you sit down and think it does not agree with reality.

Seems like a good handful of universities don't have an application fee. Two of the schools I'm applying to don't require one, those being Georgia Tech and Ohio State (although Ohio State requires a bit of hoop-jumping). I also think you have to be an American citizen to apply to those.

Carnegie Mellon's free. (cmu.edu)Also Stanford says it can waive fee for non US residents too if they show the inability to pay but I think that it would leave a bad impression because when you are taking $500 tests: GRE General, Subject and TOEFL, then it doesn't make any sense to apply desperately for a $100 waiver.

I understand quizivex' point of view. But the thing is when you are applying to like 8 universities and all costing you about $80-100/uni then you say to yourself, 'if there's a university with no application fee I should spend some money on sending scores and apply there too'. So total number goes to 9.

I just got an e-mail from them from the whole GRE propaganda machine that I submitted to. If you have over 1000 combined points on the general GRE and a GPA over a 3.5 or something you can apply for free.

lallooprasad wrote:Carnegie Mellon's free. (cmu.edu)Also Stanford says it can waive fee for non US residents too if they show the inability to pay but I think that it would leave a bad impression because when you are taking $500 tests: GRE General, Subject and TOEFL, then it doesn't make any sense to apply desperately for a $100 waiver.

I understand quizivex' point of view. But the thing is when you are applying to like 8 universities and all costing you about $80-100/uni then you say to yourself, 'if there's a university with no application fee I should spend some money on sending scores and apply there too'. So total number goes to 9.

Stanford has one of the highest fees with a 105... and the whole ETS package costs you about 400 btw

I just got an e-mail from them from the whole GRE propaganda machine that I submitted to. If you have over 1000 combined points on the general GRE and a GPA over a 3.5 or something you can apply for free.

Also, I think University of Rochester has free apps, too.

hey corey did you get a mail frm David Barish at Riverside thru the ETS search service? Do you think they're really interested in the people they send these mails too? And i think Riverside is not even top 100..

I just got an e-mail from them from the whole GRE propaganda machine that I submitted to. If you have over 1000 combined points on the general GRE and a GPA over a 3.5 or something you can apply for free.

Also, I think University of Rochester has free apps, too.

hey corey did you get a mail frm David Barish at Riverside thru the ETS search service? Do you think they're really interested in the people they send these mails too? And i think Riverside is not even top 100..

ETS Search Service! That's what I meant by "GRE propaganda machine". Yeah, it was a message from him, and I highly doubt they are actually interested in us, nor am I interested in them.

lallooprasad wrote:Carnegie Mellon's free. (cmu.edu)Also Stanford says it can waive fee for non US residents too if they show the inability to pay but I think that it would leave a bad impression because when you are taking $500 tests: GRE General, Subject and TOEFL, then it doesn't make any sense to apply desperately for a $100 waiver.

Stanford has one of the highest fees with a 105... and the whole ETS package costs you about 400 btw

$150 Subject, $170 General, $170 TOEFL. That's $490 I think! There may be different rates for domestics and internationals. I'm an international.

Just for the record, Riverside is 68 in NRC-95 and 64 in US News 2008.... ummm so I guess they're slowly improving and yea, I doubt they're personally interested in us, but I'm sure they're interested in getting some strong students or they wouldn't shell over the cash to ETS for those adds and agree to waive the application fee... my guess is that they'd wet their pants if they could net a domestic with a PGRE of over 500 j/k

Penn State astro and physics are free. How it works, at least in astro, is that you submit your application to the department directly (not the university), then they send the accepted ones to the university and pay the fee themselves.